Ditch the report and just say ‘aircraft’

Good news — Jimmie Robinson is still alive. If only people didn’t keep misspelling his first name.

Last time out, De Void visited Robinson’s only blogpost, about being an eyewitness to the famous Tremonton UFOs 60-plus years ago. De Void had a few followup questions, but some apparently ancient contact links were busted and the trail was cold for the retired astronomer named “Jimmy Robinson.” But as the relentless Frank Warren of The UFO Chronicles pointed out, maybe one “Jimmie Robinson” of Las Cruces, N.M., was the guy.

No, this definitely shouldn’t be happening. And yet …/CREDIT: shipulski.com

Turns out. “I’ve always spelled my name with an I-E,” Robinson, 87, said during a Wednesday morning phoner. “The mistake was on their end,” he added, referring to the web site listing his last known whereabouts.

At any rate — here’s what’s interesting. Not only did Robinson apparently see, in real time, what would become one of the most thoroughly government-vetted films of the early UFO era, he also — same year, 1952 — claims to have witnessed a second daylight incident that attracted intense federal scrutiny in Arizona. This one involved a B-36 bomber that was approached and paced by a pair of shiny round objects for several minutes. Every crew member saw what happened, and the pilot was so rattled he requested and received permission to make an unscheduled landing at Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson. Physicist James McDonald, one of the true heroes of that distant age, reported that the Davis-Monthan UFO-desk officer saw it himself, took detailed individual crew testimony, and compiled “the thickest [document] he ever filed on a UFO.” Unfortunately, the Air Force managed to lose that raw report, and its brief Blue Book analysis attributed the B-36 encounter to a one-word suspect: “Aircraft.” Which, probably, is technically accurate.

Robinson, a University of Arizona astronomy major, was alerted to the encounter by the distinctive racket of B-36’s 10 engines (4 jet, 6 piston). He remembers seeing one UFO, not two, but he wouldn’t forget the sight. “The plane was just north of me and it was heading west, toward Los Angeles,” he recalled. “It was definitely something round, but all I saw was the shaded side, the silhouette. I’m standing there watching the plane and this thing approaches it and disappears on the north side of it, behind the fuselage. I’m waiting for it to reappear, but it never does. I guess that’s because it stayed in a fixed position off the wing.”

Robinson would spend time at the White Sands Missile Range as well as New Mexico State University, where he would join a “photographic planetary patrol” led by the renowned Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto. Tombaugh had his own UFO sighting, in 1949, which he shared with Robinson. It was a brief encounter, nocturnal, maybe 3 seconds duration, and “it was peculiar, he couldn’t explain it,” Robinson said, “but he wasn’t going to say it was a spaceship or anything like that.”

Robinson, however, declined to share his own sighting with Tombaugh. After all, friends and family ridiculed him when he told them about Tremonton. And there was the astronomical instrumentation college professor who laid down the law to a class of impressionable undergrads: There would be no discussion of UFOs in this course because descriptions of their capabilities were impossible.

“Oh, he was very emphatic about that, and he scared the heck out of me,” Robinson said.

But in his mind’s eye, the Tremonton UFO formations linger, vivid and eternally confusing, visible for maybe two minutes as they crossed from horizon-to-horizon. Two minutes is an eternity for UFO sightings.

“After I saw that [Delbert Newhouse] movie, it turned out we were something like 800 miles apart,” Robinson said, “which would’ve made a simultaneous sighting impossible. You can figure it out, it would’ve been way too high for me to see. You can’t even see the space shuttle when it comes overhead for a landing. But the ones I saw were doing the same movements as in the movie. Two of them were circling each other but maintaining a constant speed, and their movements were very precise, very machine-like. One of them peeled off from the group and went in the opposite direction, the same as it did in the movie. And they were so clear and bright. Airplanes are painted white, but we usually see the shadowed underside. These thing were perfectly white, and I can’t explain that. Maybe they were lit internally, I don’t know.”

Someday, Robinson says, he’ll get around to blogging about the B-36. He chuckles at the Blue Book’s “Aircraft” dispensation of the case, and the lost records. “It isn’t scientific,” says the old astronomer. “When it comes to UFOs, a lot of scientists become unscientific.”

8 comments on “Ditch the report and just say ‘aircraft’”

Yes, all those real scientists are way too committed to their own interests to admit there are UFOs packed with aliens everywhere! They purposely ignore all that “proof” of UFOs simply because they’re too busy, or afraid if they were to really examine the “evidence” someone might laugh at them. Or, there might be a simpler explanation, ie., there isn’t the slightest bit of evidence that can stand up to real scientific scrutiny.

Interesting to speculate on what Dr M could have accomplished, but I don’t think we could have asked more from one person because the subject alone is too big. No one person I know of is a millionaire, scientist, politician, PR guru with an open approach to research; which is why the field needs a greater amount of collaboration, especially internationally.
I, for one, don’t expect salaried scientists to flock to UAP research any time soon, which means that amateurs have to continue to look and learn. Progress is painfully slow, but people tend to overlook the fact that progress is being made including: refining theories, finding new sources of data, documenting the complex history of the field.
In regard to refining theories, for example, the ETH no longer focuses on Mars as a likely source of ET visitation. Indirectly, mainstream science will always contribute significantly to shaping the development of the field, which is also a form of progress.

Huzzah! Score one for the professionals, Billy. I sat on this for so long i’d assumed Mr Robinson was no longer with us. Thanks for following this up. I’m so happy that you were able to speak with him. Although i included both spellings i should have made clear that either one could lead to him. (Hi Frank!)

I was gobsmacked when i came across Robinson’s account online. Here’s the real deal, i thought. He’s not just another astronomer who had anomalous things flitting about in the sky (contrary to a common bit misinformation that they never do) but his description strikes me as coming from someone who was a very keen observer.

And then it’s likely the Tremonton event, to boot. Who saw that coming?

I say “event” but i have a different idea than Mr Robinson about what, in a sense, he was seeing. He described a single object which suddenly pealed off to travel back in the direction the group had come from, just as Newhouse had seen and filmed. I think that the apparent 800-mile-high anomaly can be ignored if one assumes that the two witnesses saw the same objects but perhaps *at a different time* and behaving in a similar manner. The rotation about each other is sonthing that Kenneth Arnold and many others described during the ’47 and ’52 waves. I’m certain that i’ve also seen reports somewhere which mention one object of a group suddenly turning backwards. Somewhere.

I picked up on that, too. Hynek’s observation is timeless. Anyone who thinks scientific inquiry exists in a pristine vacuum is naive. McDonald’s outrage, to his everlasting credit, prevented him from being a politician. Wonder what he might’ve accomplished if he could’ve faked it. Alas.

A great update, thanks to the tenacity of Frank W & Billy.
I read the following statement made by Hynek, in the NICAP link, that I thought was particularly telling:
‘It is unfortunate that Dr. McDonald couldn’t understand or adjust to the political-military situation, and chose instead to act only according to strict scientific dictates.’
… one scientist recognising the (greater?) scientific integrity of another, as well as other factors in this field.